We use our computer for just about everything these days from social media to doing work for your business. The problem with this is that by using your computer for everything, you open it up to many infections. It’s not always easy to determine whether or not your computer has been infected with a virus, worm, Trojan, or spyware, because authors of malicious software do their best to disguise their work as something else. But there are some symptoms that could help you figure it out. So if your computer is acting weird with boxes popping up all over the screen or making strange noises, your computer may have been infected with malware. Good news is, there are some signs that might tell you that your computer is infected.

Unexpected pop-up windows. Often times, a fake virus will tell you that you have a security threat on your computer with pop-ups. The truth is, there really isn’t a way that a website can tell you your computer has been infected. Sometimes skype will pop up a message saying, ‘urgent security vulnerability.’ But it still can’t tell you for sure that your computer has been infected.

Unexpected sounds play randomly. Has your computer responded with an audio signal that you have no control over? This is a sign that your computer has been infected. When an error message pops up a lot of times, it will come along with a warning message and certain pieces of malware will stifle that window so you can’t see it. But you may still hear the warning message – a sound in the background that you didn’t initiate.

Files or folders are deleted. If your files or folders are deleted for absolutely no reason, it’s a sign that your computer might have an infection. The icons and/or content of your files may also end up being much different than you left them.

Random connections to unknown websites. You’ll get an alert from your legitimate anti-virus software telling you that an application is trying to connect to a website you’ve never heard of. This is also a sign that there is something on your computer that there shouldn’t be.

So if you suspect that you know your computer may be infected with malware, what can you do about it? Sure, you can try to fix the issue yourself, but that may cause more problems than it does good. The best thing that you can do is consult a technician to fix the problem for you.

Resources:

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/1368-6-signs-computer-infected.html